A life as a coach can lead to many opportunities and careers that can be achieved across all levels of sport, from amateur to professional. This career path consists of jobs as common as teaching sports to children, to jobs working at professional sports clubs and even managing teams at clubs.
If you were looking to begin a career aiming to be a professional coach you wouldn’t necessarily need a coaching degree, due to you obtaining official qualifications set by your respective sport’s National Governing Body (NGB). For example, if you were thinking of football as the sport you’re willing to go down, you take the FA coaching badges. Having said this, a degree in sport would certainly not be detrimental to making it as a full time professional coach as you will acquire the skills and knowledge relevant to working with people in sporting environments. This information can then be transferred to your specific sporting situation and applied to it, in order to achieve the best outcome.
If the professional world wasn’t the end product of your goals, there are still many opportunities to go into coaching. One such example would be to become a PE teacher that goes into schools all over the country and works with children, teaching them new sports and skills. For this, the only way you wouldn’t need a degree would be if you were say an FA coach that has been told to come in and deliver a football session, as they work for the FA. Though this would not result in huge wages, I feel like this would be a job I would seriously consider if I was to become a coach, as I would enjoy sharing my knowledge and seeing improvement in these children.
Jack - Sport and Exercise Science 